


The Black Audacious

by Vodkassassin



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, The Inheritance Cycle - Christopher Paolini, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Dragons, F/M, Immortality, M/M, Master of Death Harry Potter, Orc Hunting, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Serious Injuries, Tired of being deathless, Torture, our boy is a shameless thot
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-25
Updated: 2020-06-19
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:28:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24378730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vodkassassin/pseuds/Vodkassassin
Summary: He’s witnessed countless worlds enter into life only to destroy themselves in death, never any of them taking him with them. He’s cursed, and he’ssickof it.
Comments: 56
Kudos: 447
Collections: LOTR FF





	1. Chapter 1

He steps out from the sea like it is a staircase, the waves lapping at his knees and then his ankles as if it was sad to see him leave. 

After months traversing it’s dark and sandy floor beds, it’s a little strange for him to be drawing in a sharp gasp of crisp oxygen and not feel bubbles cascade up his face like a gentle caress. He lifts his hands and presses them to his cheeks in their stead. His face feels cold. Like something was missing. He brings his hands back down and stares at them. They’re pale. Translucent, almost, but he can’t see the veins underneath the skin like he thinks he should be able to. 

Sand clings to his boots. They’re soaked through with seawater and already beginning to crust with salt along the edges. Much like how the rest of him is. He snaps his fingers, and an abrupt warm wind buffets him from all sides. Suddenly, he’s completely dry. 

He reaches his hands up to yank a dark leather hood over his head, and begins the trek to the treeline of the great, encompassing forest he can see in the distance, leaving the ocean in his wake. 

He can feel it behind him. It’s almost like it’s trying to call him to return to it. Intangible fingers ghost at his nape, his spine, his shoulders. They tug on his sleeves, as if they’re trying to drag him backwards. 

He ignores them. Ignores the ocean. He keeps walking. 

He doesn’t want to admit to himself how difficult that is. 

  
  
  
  


There are familiar creatures here, littered across this western continent. They’re big, and hulkling, carrying weapons across their scarred and bared shoulders with the leather hides of other species clothing their bodies, the entire race warrior-like to its last member. They bite and snarl, and the howls they crow at the world around them echo hauntingly across the skies. 

That’s where the familiarity ends. 

These creatures have little mind of their own, he discovers. They cannot be reasoned with, like the ones so similar to them across the sea. Their eyes are black, beady, pinning him like wild animals when their gazes focus on his presence. They’re lost, consumed, by the bloodlust that he can hear pounding through their veins. 

He feels almost hunted. It’s exciting. He grins. 

He spends his time hunting them back. They fight him full-tilt, with reckless abandon, using all of their might and holding absolutely nothing back. He revels in it. He can feel his blood pumping through his veins, heart fit to burst against the confines of his ribcage. It beats a tattoo into his diaphragm. 

_ This _ is what being alive is  _ suppose _ to feel like, he thinks to himself. Perhaps, he wonders, if he felt like  _ this _ all the time that he was living, then he might not hate it all that much. 

“Maybe just heavily dislike,” he mumbles to himself under his breath, shoving a rusted sword he’d found in a crevice along a cliff side through the throat of one of the grasping, growling beasts. 

They’re called orcs, he eventually finds out. He hears it muttered quietly with foul avarice among a band of traveling tradesmen. He hands them two of the gold coins from across the pond that he still has tucked away in his bag, previously forgotten about. They ooh and awe over the exotic and unfamiliar legends and inscriptions, giving him a better sword in exchange. 

It’s nicer than the cracked thing he’d found in the coastal cliffs. Shinier. He can see his reflection in its face. He sits before the fire with it some nights, when nothing’s happening to distract him from boredom, and shifts his appearance in its surface to pass the time. He makes his hair a rich earthen color, his ears slightly pointed, and his eyes warm like the bark of red trees. He laughs at the reflection he sees for a good while, and then tosses the sword into its sheath and sleeps. 

He spends weeks traversing a desert like terrain. It is pinpricked with large patches of dead grassland, and the odd boulder and hilly outcropping. Orcs like to hide among the deeper ravines. He seeks them out almost as if he cannot help it. They growl at him and snap their jaws, telling him that he smells delicious. He laughs at them and swings his sword wide. 

He’s almost sad when it becomes boring. He’d expected it, though. It was the inevitable outcome. Everything loses its excitement after a while. It was fortunate enough, for him, that the orcs have kept him as entertained as they have. 

How long has it been? Weeks? Months? It could have been years already, for all he knows. He isn’t exactly the best at observing the passage of time. In fact, he’s purposefully terrible at it. It makes things easier to bear, in the long run. 

Though the chase-and-hunt game he’s been playing with these creatures has become boring for him, they have apparently grown used to the routine. They whisper amongst their packs about the reckless and laughing traveling Man in the hood, and seek him out in droves. It is his own fault that he will likely never be rid of them, now. 

After all, they lust for the excitement of the battle as much as he does. Theirs is finite, however, while he himself… isn’t. 

It’s as he’s beheading another of their fellows that the idea comes to him—and in the form of a gravelly, growled threat from the now-dead orc, no less. 

They are so  _ creative _ with their vows of torture. He’s often found himself amused by them, occasionally even impressed. They hiss and hack almost longingly about the pain that they will serve to him, if ever they were to get their meaty, bloodied claws into him. They would drag him to their leader, they say. They would string him up by his own tendons, and slowly peel the flesh from his muscles and devour him while he still writhed against cold cave walls. 

It sounds like a agonizing death. He’s had plenty of those. Many of them far, far worse than these orcs could ever dream of inventing. 

Still. What are the chances that they could possibly end his life? 

Very small, of course. Slim to none. Probably zero. He knows that. He has to know that, by now. 

But,  _ what if _ .

The next time they converge upon him like starving, rabid dogs, he fights against them with as much glee and skill as he has all other times, even if something  _ is _ missing, now. He would never go down without a fight, after all. He goes as far as to deplete their numbers by over half, and finally stumbles over and into a small crevice of many that litter the dusty, dry and cracked soil of the tundra around them. 

His leg plunges into it. He catches himself on the edge of it and thrusts his sword outward. It pierces the side of an orc that’s hustled forward to reach out for him with grasping, clawed fingers. 

It tears itself back with a howl, glaring at him with hatred even as the blood seeps from its shredded hide. He pushes up, and makes to lunge after and finish it off, permanently. 

Something makes him falter. He falls back to the ground with grunt. He glances down with some surprise, to find that his leg is stuck, pinned in place by walls of the earth. 

Maybe it’s because he’d given up before the fight even began. Maybe it is because, in the dark of night and even under the light of the sun, he  _ wondered _ .  _ Longed _ for. What if? 

Jagged claws sink mercilessly into his shoulder. They yank him free of the crevice, and he grunts in pain as his knee dislocates. The one that caught him hauls him up with both hands, and holds him above its head with a victorious roar that is soon echoed by its cohorts. 

“We have caught him at last!” The thing howls, baritone bouncing off the empty space around them. “The Mad Man is  **ours** to do with as we  **please** !”

The orcs cheer, and stomp their feet, and throw each other to the ground in celebration. 

Him, he laughs, long and hard, until he can no longer breath, even as they bundle him up with ropes tied far too tightly, and string him over the biggest one’s shoulder like the mangled prize of a hunt. 

Madman  _ indeed _ , he thinks, gasping for air. His vision goes black. 

  
  


* * *

  
  
  


Hatred courses through their veins, causing them to run hot, as it has for years and years. Sometimes they feel like it’s been this way for longer than they can remember, and then the other smacks the one upside the head, to return him to himself. 

It’s frightening, this idea that they could perhaps lose themselves to this boiling temperature that sat right beneath their skin. They could lose each other to it, or be lost together. They have gaps in their memory that they might be worried about, if they didn’t already known they’d spent that time slaughtering the gormless, creatures of evil that plagued all of Arda, a blight against everything that stands sacred. 

They can not remember the moments lost to the hatred. But, no, they don’t much mind. It had been spent ridding the world of that which didn’t belong on it in the first place. 

Something in the distance bellows a guttural, deep throated howl. It echoes of the seemingly endless hills under a twilight sky, and is soon joined by others. They sound closer than the two of them had initially believed. 

The twins share a glance. They can see their own reflection in the face staring back at them, as well as in the gleaming, glittering eyes of an elf in the night. A haze crawls across their gazes. Heat sears and pops along their bones. It urges them forward in the direction of the triumphant crows.

These creatures don't deserve triumph. They deserve nothing but to return to dust and join the soil of the muddied floor of the world, mixed into the dirt of a cursed land and forgotten. 

Their feet pound silently against the ground as they give chase to their unsuspecting prey. 

  
  


* * *

  
  
  


The orcs are, perhaps, a bit more intelligent than he’d given them credit for. At least, this one seems to be. 

“Tell me,” his tormentor hisses at him, fisting fingers in his hair and yanking his head back to see his face, “ **what** sort of Man are you?”

His tormentor is peculiar. Different from the other orcs. Different in the way that he carries himself with purpose, and authority. Different in the color of his skin, the quality of his armor and weapons. Different in the shine of sharp intelligence and cunning that exists in his eyes. 

His head is wrenched at, again. His neck feels like it might break at any moment. The strange orc snarls, digging one metal claw into his side and dragging it down through his flesh until it tears out from above his hip. He feels it graze a rib or two along the way. He whimpers. 

_ A mistake _ , he thinks silently. 

Later, free of them, he would scoff at himself. Call himself pathetic, and be in denial. But now, in the moment of pain, he asks himself  _ why _ . Why does he do this? He doesn’t like being hurt.  _ Pain _ is not what he longs for. 

“ **Who** are you?” The white orc gutters harshly, eyes narrow and cruel. 

He hisses like a snake, and it trails off with a whispery chuckle even as he’s wheezing in agony. They can sometimes understand him when he speaks like this, he knows. He wonders why. This isn’t a language anyone but he and the reptiles that crawl along the dirty, dusty ground should be able to decipher. 

A thin, cold metal is thrust into his upper arm and dragged through the muscles there. Not deep enough to cause too much damage, but enough to make white, hot pain erupt and tingle up his nerves like a piping steam. 

“TELL ME,” the thing roars. 

He hisses again. It’s weaker this time, but he finds himself grinning at the rage that sparks in the orc’s cold eyes. 

The orcs that surround them beat metal and stone against metal and stone, and crow at the darkening sky like they’ve won something, when the white one grabs him by the shoulders and throws him with extreme gusto into the hard surface of a nearby boulder. 

He feels himself slam bodily against the ground. His eyes are closed, spots swimming against his black vision. If he were to open them, and look up, he would see the rusted but firm shackles that are pounded into the rock above his head. He knows they are there, because he’s been hanging from them for too many days to count. Weeks? Time spins dizzily by, and he isn’t sure whether he can tell how long it’s been. Either way, he doesn’t want to think about it. 

They roar and jeer at him as he’s hauled up again, wrists placed against chilled metal. He can’t hold back a whimper when they close the bindings of the shackles around his forearms once more.  _ No mor _ e. He doesn’t want any more. He just wants it to end. He just wishes for an end. 

That’s all he’s ever wished for. Why can’t they understand that? 

Why can’t  _ anyone  _ understand that?

The beasts scream guttural cries at the vast, empty, twilight expanse above them. It’s cold, and cares nothing for what happens beneath its reaches. Fists find purchase against the shredded and sliced flesh of his torso, pounding ceaselessly without beat or tempo. His heartbeat quickens again, to match the hits that knock what little air he’s managed to gather back out of him. His lungs and ribcage creak ominously beneath the insistent pressure. He chokes on his own cries and clenches his teeth. He tastes blood. 

He opens his eyes, finally, and grins at them all. They meet his gaze with empty eyes that hold only a never ending thirst for death and decay. Aside from the white one, who surveys his torture with a flinty glint in his that belies something else entirely. Something perhaps even more sinister. 

Chills crawl up his spine. It’s slammed back into the stone he’s been strung up against, and protests against the abuse. He tilts his head back to meet the rock, and screams through his teeth. 

Something whistles through the still air of an otherwise calm desert night. It lands with a thud into flesh. Not his. The orcs falls silent. 

He opens his eyes once more, curiously, to see the one whose meaty fist is currently buried in his abdomen start to sway where it stands. It teeters around drunkenly, pivoting on its heel unwillingly until it’s back is facing him. He can see the fletching of an arrow buried directly between it’s oddly sharp shoulder blades. The creature tumbles face first to the ground without a sound, dead before it even falls. 

The rest of the beasts burst into a cacophony of battle cries of outrage and blood-calling. They go for their weapons, and metals slides against metal with screeching and sparks. Five more fall before any of them manage to unsheathed their blades. 

That still leaves twenty, he thinks absently. His head is spinning dangerously. A cough builds up in his throat, and he tastes copper as fresh blood spills down his lips like a ruby waterfall. 

He sees them fall, one by one, between his shuttered lashes. There’s clumps of dried blood and rust caught in them that obscure some of his vision, but he can’t find the energy to blink them away. 

He’s so tired. He just wants to sleep. He can barely move. It terrifies him. 

He peers through the debris as best he can, even as his eyes close a fraction more. For a moment, all he can see is the bitterly disappointed sneer on the white orc’s face as it leaps astride the back of a great, bristling, wolf-like creature. It skulks on the outskirts of whatever chaos was currently razing the orc encampment to the ground, and then shuffles off into a shadow. It and it’s rider vanish into the dark of the twilight, leaving behind their fellows to their fate. 

Orcs fall around him with cries, and arrows sticking out from where they’ve pierced through vital organs. They run amok, aimlessly, unable to figure out where their assailants are. Cries of rage and protests quickly turn to guttural howls of pain and death. As abruptly as it had started, it ends, and he is encompassed by a strange, eerie silence that sits in direct contrast to the loud mockery and rally cries he’s grown used to in his time here. 

Soft feet patter against the cold, dry soil. Tall, shadowy figures with lithe builds make their rounds and rip their arrows from the gullets of the corpses that litter the camp. They are graceful, but it is dark, and he can’t make out much more of their silhouettes. 

He opens his mouth. He wants to tell these archers that the paramount of their prey here is quickly getting away from them. But all that he manages to utter is a tortured keen. 

He lets his head fall forward. His chin hits his collarbones. They’re bruised, and it aches, but he’s too tired to really feel it anymore. His eyes shutter closed. He’s so close, he can feel himself drifting away from everything. He wishes he could stay up there forever, and never come back down. 

Cool fingers grasp his chin, lifting his head gently upward. A hand presses flat against one of his cheeks. Words are murmured, exchanged between the two archers, willowy and as dancing as they moved. The very language he can hear sifting gently through his ears is musical, and lulls him to full sleep faster than any lullaby. 

  
  


Somehow, he is freed of the shackles. Strong arms wind around his waist, and he’s resting snugly against a stranger’s chest. The world rocks beneath them. 

For a second, he wonders if he actually has returned to the ocean like he had promised himself he wouldn’t. But no. There had been nobody else down there but him and the marine life. It’s a horse that they are riding. 

It gallops steadily beneath them. He can feels it’s muscles straining to go at speed. Whoever is holding him speaks, loudly over hoofbeats, to someone else.

Another person, on a different horse. They shout back in the same language, all tonal voices deep and firm though it passes through his ears with the swiftness of a river. 

A light hand glides across his shoulder blades, and tucks material in close around his neck to protect him from the wind that whirls against their flight. 

His eyes fall shut. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rewriting an old fanfic of mine from my old FFN account. I’m not going to link it here, ever, bc that stuff is from when I was 11-14 years old and it’s all cringe-worthy, but if your smart enough to do some digging and stupid enough to wanna get your brain with the horrendous writing of a preteen, then you could probably find it. I wouldn’t recommend it though this version is much better


	2. Chapter 2

“You’ve done your hair differently,” a middle-aged elf guesses, tracing the rim of his teacup with the edge of a nail. 

The younger elf who sits across from him smiles prettily, amusement dancing in her eyes as she winds a strand of her dark ringlets around a finger. “No.”

“... Is that a new necklace?”

A laugh, this time. “Well,  _ yes _ , but that is not exactly what I was talking about.” 

Elrond leans forward, studying his daughter with narrowed eyes. He sets down his tea and steeples his fingers before his face. 

After a moment, he gives up. 

“You’ll have to forgive this old elf, Arwen dear.” He wallows quietly, stirring in another cube of sugar. “He’s not as sharp as he used to be.”

His daughter laughs again, the beautiful sound tinkling through the crisp morning air as it hasn’t it far too long. Elrond can’t help himself but smile. 

“Oh, ada, you are not  _ that _ old, yet,” she chides. 

“ _ Yet _ ,” he wags a finger at her. “Is that not the key word, my darling daughter?” 

He leans back in the white wicker chair, another masterful creation of Rivendell’s fine craftsmen, and shake his head with a wry smile. “ _ Yet _ ,” he murmurs. 

She reaches forward for a grape off the vine and pops it into her mouth with relish. He watches her for a moment, quietly. It’s been far, far too many years that he’s last seen her. Elves, with their longevity and all, though they may both be, even a single Mannish year apart from her makes something curl anxiously around his heart. 

In fact, the time has passed agonizingly slowly in regards to whence he last saw of his sons, either. After their mother had passed, the children had grown immeasurably distant. He allowed it, knowing that they would need time with themselves and among the trees if they are to ever possibly find peace within their hearts again. But, even as he knows this, there is pain. 

The pain of knowing that his children are hurting, day by day, sharply and absently and every way in between. So it is for him, as well, as he had lost a wife. 

But, it often feels, while he has lost a wife, he has also lost his children, for he does not see them as much as he would like, anymore. And he sees them smile even less. 

But here is his daughter, sitting before him in visit. She’s come from Lothlorien to stay awhile, and for once his heart is less tumultuous as it has often been, in recent years. 

Though...

“You come in here with eye like fire, shoulders squared with avid determination, and announce that you have made  _ changes  _ in your life,” he bemoans, sitting up to give her an exasperated look, “and now you won’t even tell me  _ what _ ?”

“But,” that laugh again. Music. “ _ Ada _ , it is so fun to tease you, you know.”

He rests a hand against his heart, pretending to be just slightly offended. “Do I really?”

Arwen just smiles knowingly at him. She had to have picked that up from Galadriel. It is nearly identical. 

“What, then? Arwen?”

She gives a short, soft sigh, shoulders slumping. Then, a mischievous light enters her eyes, and Elrond can already feel a headache coming in. 

“Grandfather is going to teach me to wield a sword!” She whispers to him in delight. 

Elrond leans back again, parental fatigue pulling at the corners of his eyes. He rubs at them, a bit. “Is he, now? So you managed to wear him down, did you?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I would have thought Celeborn was made of sterner strength, but alas…”

“ _ Adar _ !” Arwen pouts at him. “Just because  _ you _ refused to have me taught swordplay doesn’t mean it isn’t a  _ good idea _ , and grandfather only saw the  _ reason _ in -“

“Peace, daughter,” Elrond raises a hand. He gives her a dry smile even as she frowns at him. “I meant no foul. I think it is… well thought, of him, to want you to be able to protect yourself. Darker times are shadowing the lands, these days, after all…”

Arwen stares, faint surprise tilting across her features, so like her mother that sometimes Elrond doesn’t want to look away from her least he possibly forget. She settles down back in her seat, pleased now that he has favored things her way and could share in the celebration. 

No, Elrond does not want her learning swordplay. She is his little girl. He’d fought against the twins learning archery and similar sport just as hard, when they had been younger as she was. Though, it was a might more difficult, keeping two growing elven boys from being taught what they as well as society itself considered their due. With Arwen, it had been easier, as she was a lady, but even so. She has slipped through his grasp like sand. His children grow quickly, and now that he sees less of them it seems that they grow ever quicker outside of his sight. 

“Aside from this new responsibility,” he ventures, unsure whether he wants to know anything more, “how fares your stay in the Golden Wood?”

“It’s… peaceful,” Arwen begins, staring into her teacup thoughtfully. She takes a sip and sets her lips. “Different than the air of the Halls of Healing, of course, but—”

“My lord,” a voice calls, and Elrond closes his eyes with a short, sharp sigh. He’d made it known his time with his daughter was not to be interrupted outside of the most dire of circumstances. 

The two elves turn to see yet another fellow brunette walk briskly across the veranda and come to a stop at their table. He shuffles sheaves of paper into the depths of his long, billowing sleeves, and looks up from the reports he carries with a flat stare. 

“My lord,” he says again, and then nods at Arwen diligently, “my lady.”

His daughter tilts her head toward him in return, “Hello, Erestor.”

“Erestor,” Elrond begins, trying to keep the annoyance out of his tone, “I had thought I’d made it clear, when I said no one was to—”

“The twins have returned,” Erestor interrupts him. 

Elrond and his daughter both sit up straight in surprise. Infrequent Arwen’s visits may be, it is ever rarer for her brothers to venture home from their questing as well, within that same frame of time. Arwen hasn’t seen Elladan nor Elrohir for… perhaps much too long, the lord of Rivendell wonders worriedly. 

His heart lifts, and then sinks in the same moment. Something in the edge of Erestor’s jaw doesn’t speak of good tidings. 

“What news do you bring, my friend?” Elrond requests, already standing from his chair and taking steps to the door. 

“They brought a guest back, with them,” the elf counselor replies, following at his heel without hesitation. Elrond increases his speed, concern eating at his thoughts. “He desperately requires your skills.”

“Arwen, my dear,” he half turns back to the afternoon spread they’d been enjoying, to find his daughter nodding determinedly after him, teacup nearly to her lips. 

“Go,  _ ada _ .” She tells him. “Give this friend of ours the aid that he needs.”

Elrond returns her nod, and has Erestor lead him to his new patient. 

  
  
  


He barely gets to see his sons’ faces before he lays eyes on the man they’d brought to him, and doesn’t have time for anything past a quick greeting. 

The patient is nearly dead already, after all. The picture he makes against the white linens of the operation bed is horrifying. He hears one of his aids rush from the chamber to lose their lunch in a planter out in the corridor. They’re a younger one, yet. The wars were slightly before their time. Still inexperienced with the more grislier side of healing. He barks an order for them to be replaced. There is no time for queasy stomachs, here. 

Lacerations cover what little can be seen of the man’s skin, buried amongst great swatches of deep bruising and a thick layer of congealed blood. Some of the swelling yellow, purple and black goes straight down to the skeleton, the white of bone peeking out from beneath the horrific scene of blood and shredded sinew. One of his legs is twisted at an odd angle from the knee downward, and both arms look as if someone had taken a cheese grater to them with cruel avarice. A long gash, hastily patched together with temporary field stitching, travels down his left side and leaks a murky fluid mixed with a rusted color. 

Elrond steels himself. He is adamant that there would be no more death in these halls if he could help it. And he can. 

“Warm water to wash, boil me some rags, and someone fetch the antiseptic soaps.” He barks out demands like a general, expecting them to be followed without protest at the very second he utters them. This is his battle field. “I need needles, the silk thread for suturing… grab a clean set of scalpels, as well. We may have need of them later, and I would rather have them on hand than not.”

He turns to his sons while his orders are followed by the healers that occupy the room. The young patient is settled carefully into the bed while they pull back the linens, his leathers peeled away from mangled skin. Warm water is poured over him in order to separate the cloth from where the blood had dried over it and sealed it into the wounds. In many places, they are forced to cut the leather from his body entirely, in order to reach the site of injury. 

Elladan and Elrohir stand off to the side, watching all of this happen. Their eyes are hooded, dark, and they stare silently through the rushing aids at the stray they’d dragged in from their quests. 

“Who is he?” The elf lord wonders to them aloud. 

He gets a pair of identical shrugs. Neither twin speaks a word. 

Elrond pins hem both with a stern glare. “How did he get like this?”

“Orcs,” spits Elrohir, crossing his arms, as if that single word is all the explanation Elrond needs. A glare of his own eclipses the younger twin’s face. He doesn’t look away from the patient. 

Elrond opens his mouth to again demand answers, but Elladan interrupts, providing them himself. 

“He has a fever,” the calmer of the twins relays to their father. His voice is quiet. Brittle. It makes Elrond’s frown even fiercer. “A very high one, from the feel of it. I don’t wonder why. They were torturing him,  _ ada _ .”

Disgust curls within Elrond’s gut. He gives the boys a swift nod, and then hurries on to do his job. Perhaps Elrohir’s initial one-worded answer had been enough, after all. 

Orcs, indeed. Elrond works to keep a sneer off his face as he tugs on a pair of working gloves and winds a light cloth mask around his mouth and nose. He grabs a boiled rag from the hands of the aid offering it and gets to helping them wipe the blood free of the patient so they can get down to what needs to be done. 

There is a lot of work set out for them, with this one. 

  
  
  


The door opens slowly, with an odd sort of creak that isn’t the usual for elven establishments in any sort of world, let alone this one. It sounds misplaced in this room he lies in, with its high, vaulted ceiling and gilded walls and ornate, crafted window sills that overlook lush greenery that is at the same time far too familiar, and altogether alien. 

He sits with his back pressed against the sparkling, fence-like headboard of woven precious metals. The bruises there from where they’d tried to grind his spine into the rock smart viciously, but he ignores it with practice. His entire body aches with a sharp, feverish pain that makes his bones feel like they are white hot and melting through the flesh that covers them. The skin of his arms tingles with the chill, and he shakily brings up his hands to rub carefully over the bandages that cover them as he stares out across the seemingly endless droves of trees and birdsong that lies just outside his reach. 

It’s so achingly familiar yet irrevocably  _ wrong, _ he wishes just for a fleeting moment that he’d just stayed in the sea and never left. 

The wandering thought causes an irritation at himself to flash, hotly, and he huffs a sigh that shutters as it escapes his mouth. 

He doesn’t  _ regret _ it. He never regrets anything, anymore. He’s lived too long to second guess his own actions. What was there to regret? Even the worst of all his decisions don’t matter in the end, when the world burns over and begins anew with yet another fresh start that he’s never once wanted. 

He doesn’t regret. 

There’s a click as the door shuts behind someone. Chills spark up and down his spine, and he squeezes his eyes shut so that he doesn’t have to look out at the trees that sway in the wind and seem to reach out toward where he sits, bows and limbs grasping longingly for him when he’s already, time and time again, refused them.

He regrets being so stupid, a monumental idiot that assumes, in an endless cycle no matter how many times he’s been proven wrong, that just because it never sticks doesn’t mean that dying doesn’t  _ hurt _ —

He shudders violently, and rubs at his arms with more force than he intends. It draws a hiss of pain from his mouth, and he  _ regrets _ .

A layer of softness descends upon his shoulders like a welcome weight that finally does what nothing else ever can, and anchors him to the earth. It wraps itself securely around him and keeps him from falling once again into the void full of endlessly puttering thoughts and tangents that do nothing but drive more stakes directly into his overbeaten heart. 

A hand gently smooths the material over his back, minding not to press too hard or catch itself on the bandages there. It wanders up and runs through his hair with a touch so fleeting and careful that it makes his eyes sting. 

He forces them open, and sees the trees settling back down in their roots. They’ve decided they approve of where he is, at the moment, and have no need to interfere. 

“ _ Alalëa _ ,” he breathes,  _ finally _ . His voice grates on the famined field that his throat resembles, parched and torn. The fingers in his hair go still. 

Two hands grasp his shoulders, still with a touch that’s lighter than anything he’s felt in ages, and turn his body toward a person. Gray eyes that are sharp in shape but eternally gentle in being gaze down at him with ocean waves lapping at their irises as unnamable emotions roil and churn inside them. 

“What was that you said, young one?”

His own eyes widen fractionally, and he can’t help the hysterical giggles that bubble up his throat and flee his mouth without first asking him any permissions. There’s an attempt to raise up a shaky hand to cover the grin that stretches across his face and pulls at a plaster applied diligently over his cheek. He curls in on himself, unable to stop his body shaking from the laughter that fills him. He feels lightheaded with the giddiness. He feels like everything is wrong. 

The blanket that had been thrown over his shoulders is tucked in around him, and he’s pulled against someone, arms encircling him. They’re gentle but firm, like steel bars covered in down feathers, and he sinks into them with a grateful sob that he can’t quite keep inside. 

“It is alright.” The elf soothes. His voice is a tone above the ones from before, on the horses and in the orc encampment. It contains a note of something that the other two didn’t  _ lack _ , per say, but held less of. “You are among friends. Here, you are safe.”

He feels himself fall forward, and his face presses into the crook of this man’s neck. He sinks his teeth into his bottom lip, enough to draw blood, and keens lowly. 

He’s hasn’t heard such a bold faced lie in years. 

  
  
  
  
  


Elrond tucks his whimpering patient under his chin, and holds him to his chest, humming a tune that he hopes brings him even the slightest sense of peace. 

The boy feels smaller than he looks. He curls into Elrond’s shoulder, shivering, and there’s still enough room left over in the elf’s arms to fit one of his own children into if he so wished. Elrond tightens his hold carefully, mindful of the bandages and injuries that litter this young man’s body like it’s a battleground, and isn’t able to keep the frown from creasing his brow. 

Orcs are not usually ones to let their prey live for long. They have their sickening, twisted fun, yes, but it can’t last for more than perhaps a fortnight, maybe two before their bloodlust inevitably gets the better of their phantom patience and they dig into another revolting meal. 

He smooths out a wrinkle in the bandages that are wound around the boy’s chest, holding his ribs in place as they mend. They’re loosening, now, and Elrond makes a note to rebind them later, to avoid any unnecessary blunders in the healing process. 

He’s seen the aftermath of orc torture before. It has been far and few inbetween, in recent years, much more commonplace in the wars, but he was no stranger to the horrific and terrible things that map their stories out across marred flesh. 

The stories that this boy’s skin tell of, though. He’s been at the mercy of the cruel, heartless creatures for  _ months _ . It’s utterly unprecedented, and Elrond simply cannot wrap his mind around the idea. 

The fact of the matter is, this young man should be dead several times over and weeks past. 

And yet, he shudders and burrows into Elrond’s embrace, choking on tears but still breathing and miraculously  _ alive _ . 

Elrond runs his fingers up and down the trembling back, and figures that humming just isn’t enough. He tilts his head down so that his cheek rests atop the boy’s head, and begins to lowly sing the first elvish lullaby that comes to mind. 

Abruptly, something harsh and taut in the line of the young man’s shoulders relaxes, like the snapping of a bowstring. Elrond can feel the boy lean in and press his ear against the base of his throat, and he’s so quiet that for a second Elrond fears he’s stopped breathing entirely. After a moment, however, he realizes that he can still feel the soft puffs of air glancing over his collarbone. They’re eased now, less shattered. 

He resolutely keeps the song going. Transfixed is better than hysterical, in any case. 

  
  
  
  
  


They press their ears to the wood, and listen, wide sightless eyes fixed on each other’s. Home is always a breath of fresh, cool air to the fire that thrums just below their skin, entrenched in scents that caress away their aches and pains and reminds them of times when all was, if not right, then as content as it could possibly be. 

It is a kindly break from the monotonous slashing of blades and splattering of black, dark blood, but their father hasn’t sung lullabies in centuries. 

Something sharp cuts from within himself. His heart feels like it’s been wrung out and dried on a tanning rack, and Elrohir rubs at his chest with a hand that he refuses to acknowledge trembles, just minutely enough for him to register it against the stuttering of his own heartbeat. 

Across from him, where they both stand leaning heavily against the wall on either side of a closed door, Elladan slowly slides down the stone. His knees hit the floor and his breath hitches in his throat. There is a shattered look on his brother’s face, and Elrohir watches him mouth silently along with the words to the song that they both can hear. 

Elrohir closes his eyes too tightly, he can feel lashes digging into where they shouldn’t be. He presses his hand flat against his diaphragm, and tries to steady his breathing. It’s futile. 

He doesn’t want to, but he finds himself joining his brother on the cold corridor floor. 

The two of them sit there for what feels like, and could probably be, hours. Time passes by without registering in their minds. All they can hear is the musical tone that twists and turns through the air as if it’s dancing a slow, gentle dance around them, muffled by a closed door that they cannot bring themselves to open. This song is not for them. 

Elrohir twists the front of his tunic in his fist, and something inside of himself feels broken. This song is not for them. 

After a time, their father’s voice grows slightly hoarse, but he keeps at it for a while longer. This is an epic, a ballad that tells the story of ancient times past, where the world still thrummed joyously over its every child, and all day and night there was laughter and love and music. It speaks of a lesson, that though there was strife in the world even then, the people could prosper and truly  _ live _ , so long as they stayed together and held one another upon their shoulders. 

It speaks of family. 

The tune trails off, softly, echoing out into the wind that twirls amongst the great trees that rest just outside the hall. 

Elrohir sits there with his brother for the few long moments of silence that follow, knowing that Elladan feels just as wrecked as he does.

This song is not for them. 

They’re gone before the door opens. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m not entirely sure how well my writing style meshes together in this chapter... eh

Attempting to wrangle countless handfuls of tiny, tiny little berries from their places nestled against their branches turns out to be, in fact, a rather futile way to take one’s mind off one’s problems. 

Elrond draws in a breath, digging a particularly stubborn bloom out of his way, and then lets the breath out in one big gust of a sigh. The task is so monotonous and repetitive that he can do nothing _but_ think while partaking in it! Truly vexing. 

He starts pinching the berries off by the stems, tossing them aside to remove them individually later, and the very idea of going back through them again to de-stem them, despite it making things go faster for him now, fills him with such pent up frustration that eventually Elrond shoves the wooden bowl away from himself and watches silently as it slides across the stone table and comes to a stop with a clatter. Thankfully, it doesn’t go off the edge. He’d hate to not only have to pick up the berries, but explain to his head assistant why there was a mess in the first place. The elleth is persnickety on a good day, Elrond would rather avoid having to put up with her disapproving harrumphs. 

“My,” a honeyed voice spins out from the doorway. “We are quite antagonized today, I see.”

He whips around in surprise, only to see a familiar face framed by wheat gold locks staring at him with brows raised over vivid blue eyes. 

“Glorfindel?”

The Noldor elf quirks his lips at Elrond, and makes his way into the room, gaze sliding from the healer to the berry bowl on the table and back again. 

“Indeed.”

Elrond presses out a sigh, and straightens up from where he was hovering over the branch. He smooths down his outer robe. “What brings you here, old friend? You tend to try your best to _avoid_ the hall of healing, if you can help it.”

“I do,” Glorfindel agrees shamelessly, leaning his hip against the edge of the table and crossing his arms over his chest. “But, word around Rivendell has it that the lord of the Homely House has—how do you say, a _bee_ in his bonnet—“

Elrond casts the elf a flat look, and Glorfindel cracks a small grin, continuing on.

“And since the lord happens to be a good old friend of mine, I thought I’d come by and see whatever the matter was. So,” he leans in, bringing the few inches he has over Elrond to a more even ground, and ticks a brow, “what’s got you in such a tizzy, my friend?”

Elrond tilts his head down, giving it a short shake from side to side. He pushes the branch backward a bit so that it joins the bowl, and sighs. 

“It’s my newest patient,” he admits. 

“The lad that the twins brought home?”

“Yes, three days ago. I’ve found a bit of an… obstacle, with his recovery.”

Glorfindel frowns, but it smooths out enough and the blonde elf gives him a encouraging grin. “I’m sure it’s nothing that will stump you for long. You’re the best healer this side of the sea.”

“It’s not—“ Elrond begins, and then pauses. He presses his lips together. “It’s not the healing, that’s going as well as it possibly can. Almost _too_ well, actually. It’s in the… communication, that I’ve found an issue.”

“He’s awake already?” Glorfindel’s brows shoot up. “With those wounds? They say he was practically dead already when they brought him in.”

“He _was_. I do believe his heart nearly gave out under their combined strain. Apparently, however, all it took was some good enough stitching and a thorough cleaning, and the skin is already well on its way to scabbing over at the edges. The fever came down to a more manageable temperature early last night. For all intent and purposes, he’ll be right as rain given a month’s time, perhaps two, so long as the fever breaks soon.”

“Aside from the scarring, I’m sure,” says Glorfindel a bit darkly. Neither was he a stranger to the various treacheries of the orcs.

“Well,” Elrond sends his friend a thin smile. “You know as well as anyone that’s a different healing altogether. And seems to have much to do with my problem, so it goes.”

“Oh?”

The lord of Rivendell leans into the table with a sigh, shoulders slumping. “I’m finding it rather impossible to speak with him.”

“Can he not?”

“No, his voice is fine. But,” here, Elrond frowns pensively, gaze fixed on the far wall, “I’ve no idea how we’ll be able to talk. He tenses up and goes altogether unresponsive when I try to use Common with him, and I have since ruled it detrimental. I’m not entirely sure how to proceed.”

“I don’t suppose he knows Sindarin,” Glorfindel drawls, but there’s a pinch to his brow that belies the deepness with which he ponders the situation.

Elrond shakes his head. “It’s the only thing that can possibly get him to relax again, but no. He doesn’t understand a word.”

The two of them stand there in companionable silence, minds focused on far away thoughts and eyes staring off into a space beyond the room they occupy. 

Elrond is surprised at the interest his friend shows in his young patient. He tends not to busy himself with the affairs of Men, and should even a Ranger pass through for a visit to the halls of healing, Glorfindel would rather avoid concerning himself with any of them. There are special cases, of course, when Glorfindel—who is and always has been a curious elf by default, no matter the Age—finds some interest within the circumstance. Most often those situations concern victims of orc torture, who are rare and few between in being rescued or even found alive. 

So, it’s as surprising as it is not. With the severity of the boy’s wounds, and the lengths and hours the healers went to in order to treat them, word has spread quickly within Rivendell about Elladan and Elrohir’s stray. Of course Glorfindel would hear about it. And, of course he would come asking questions. 

Out of everyone, even those within the various elven havens, Glorfindel knows best the dark and twisted habits of the orcs. If anyone can sympathize with Elrond’s new patient, it is him. 

So, he is in no way surprised when the blonde eyes him from the corner of his and asks, almost haltingly, “I don’t suppose I could visit this lad for myself, do you?”

Elrond just shakes his head, and reaches out a long arm to drag the branch and bowl back to himself. “I need to redress his wounds, anyway. Help me finish this salve, and we shall be on our way. It is better if it is fresh.”

Glorfindel puts up a fuss, of course, but despite him grumbling about not being a nurse, he steps up to give him a hand and they finish the preparations in half the time it would have taken Elrond on his own.

  
  
  


They step lightly down the corridor, side by side, arms laden with the supplies Elrond will need to redress the lad’s wounds. As they approach the room his friend’s latest patient is in, Glorfindel’s ears twitch as they catch the tail end of murmurings coming from within—some sort of conversation being had without them.

He slows his gait a moment, to exchange looks with Elrond, whose eyebrows really just speak for him. Glorfindel takes a short moment to turn to the side and push the ajar door the rest of its way open with his shoulder, his hands being otherwise occupied with his burden. 

The words being spoken inside abruptly cease. He steps in with Elrond right at his heel to find the curious scene of all three of his friend’s children standing in a semi circle in the middle of the room, facing one another. Their heads are turned toward the doorway, now, and each of their faces present an identical sheepish expression hidden away behind a mock haughty front that Glorfindel has found characteristic to the family. 

He glances at his friend. Elrond’s eyebrow has risen, and he graces his children with a stern look. 

“What’s this, then?”

Arwen clears her throat quietly, swishing out her skirt with a hand and lowering herself down into the bedside chair she’d obviously been sitting in earlier, perhaps before the twins had entered the room? Curious. 

Both boys glances at each other, finding that they’ve both gone defensive with their arms crossed in an identical pose. They uncross them at once, and then sigh in unison, looking almost irritated at their supreme similarity. 

Glorfindel hides a smile, moving himself out of the way to set down the supplies he carries onto a long table set against the far wall. Behind him, he can hear the three younger elves attempt to speak over each other, before Elrond quickly puts a stop to it. 

“Visiting while the inhabitant of the room lies unconscious and unable to concede to nor refute your presence is monsterously inappropriate, my loves. Might I ask again why you decided to do so, and this time get a clear explanation from one of you, instead of unintelligible words?”

The twins exchange uncomfortable looks. Arwen raises her chin ever so slightly. 

“We were curious, Ada,” she admits. “We were holding debate over his origins, and came to see how he fares after receiving your ineffable care.”

 _Ineffable_. Glorfindel shakes his head slowly, turning to get a look at his friend, who has closed his eyes to breath. Oh, Elrond’s children were just precious. 

“Elladan, Elrohir? Without the pandering, if you would.”

Arwen makes a face, a soft huff escaping her as she turns herself away from the rest of them, choosing instead to present her attention to the immobile form curled upon the bed. His back is turned away from the room, toward the window, and the sheet is pulled up over his shoulder to his chin. The lad is quite firmly tucked in. 

The twins look at each other, a thousand words of conversation passing between them in a single glance—witnessing it is always a bit of a marvel, the connection between two elven twins. Children are rare in and off themselves, but two whom are identical in almost all ways? Practically unheard of. His friend is blessed by the Valar, surely. Glorfindel has thought it before. Perhaps to make up for all the tragedy Elrond has been forced to bear in his long life. 

“We’re the ones that brought him in,” Elrohir begins haltingly. “Don’t we get to check in on him? Find out how he’s doing?”

“We’re worried,” Elladan immediately tacks on, willfully ignorant of the frown his brother directs at him. “He was so… _hurt_ , when we found him. I didn’t think he’d make it. And now that he _has…_ ” 

The more emotive of the twins looks to the still form that Arwen is watching over in silence. There’s a pinch in between his brows, and he’s worrying at his lip with his teeth. 

Elrohir crosses his arms once more, and sighs. “Fine, yes. Maybe we’re a bit concerned. Has he woken at all?”

None of the three are looking at their father, gazed directed elsewhere, anywhere else. Glorfindel withholds a fond chuckle — _kids_ , you have to love them, yes? — and edges his way around the seated elleth to haul the pitcher of boiled water that he carries in his hands to the bedside table in front of the window. 

“He has.” Elrond gives his children a stern one-over. “Which goes to say, he is now much more likely to easily wake. He is in great need of rest — it is absolutely crucial to his healing. The three of you choosing to hold your _debates_ over him in the very room that he sleeps is monumentally _rude_.”

Ah, there it is, the scowl of a disappointed parent. Elrond wears it very well indeed. The three younger elves cringe inward, heads bowed in shame. 

“Furthermore,” the lord continues in the same quiet, level voice he’s kept this whole encounter, “did you not spare any thought to the possibility that your _carelessness_ and unmannerly conduct could have disrupted the rest he so desperately needs?”

The siblings look to one another, haughtiness nowhere to be seen as they actually consider the potential consequences their actions might have garnered for not only them, but the very subject of their curiosities. 

“He’s been asleep the entire time we’ve been here,” Elladan comments hesitantly, but he sounds unsure. Elrohir glares at the wall, and Arwen is biting her lip pensively as she stares down at the sheets of the bed. 

“Does it matter? The fact still remains that you _could_ have woken him, and caused him stress, which wouldn’t _do_ well with his condition, you understand—“

Glorfindel watches them marinate in their second-guessing of themselves for a moment, enjoying the folly of the young. Very quickly, however, he grows bored and turns back to set the lid over the pitcher after checking the temperature to make sure the water inside is indeed still hot. It wouldn’t do to get started on the redressing of the wounds and then find that their cleaning solution had run cold in the meantime. 

He glances over his shoulder, not to his kin — the younger of whom are still being scolded — but to the figure lying curled on the bed, and pauses. 

Elrond’s new patient is a sight, certainly. Glorfindel has heard reports on the lad’s condition when he’d been brought in. None of them had much good to say, and that shows now in the swathes of bandages that the slight human is wrapped in. He lies carefully positioned on his side, a fluffed pillow propping him up from behind so that he doesn’t roll over onto the vicious wounds that mar his back. Another pillow has been set before him to keep him from rolling the opposite direction as well, mindful of the wounds decorating his front — however, this one has been wrangled into the grasp of the patient, and is now clutched loosely to his chest, which rises and falls so slightly Glorfindel is for a moment concerned that the boy isn’t actually breathing. 

He glances up to get a better look at him. There’s a slight discoloration along the left side of his face, a sickly yellow and purple bruising that fades into a mottled black right at the temple. Glorfindel winces a bit as he takes note of it — head wounds are always rather unpredictable. This one seemed bad enough to take affects. Perhaps it has something to do with the lad’s strange aversion to Common?

He allows his eyes to examine the rest of the patient’s features. The inky blackness of the hair makes the boy seem all the more paler, and it does him no favors now, laid out against the stark white of the Hall of Healing’s meticulously cleaned bedsheets. High cheekbones stand out beneath stretched skin — signs of starvation and dehydration. Orc’s certainly would never care to actually tend to their prisoners. It’s rare that they kept them alive longer than a week at all. Which makes the circumstances surrounding this all the more curious. 

There’s a soft, relaxed smile stretched across the lad’s face, in sleep he most surely looks more calm and tranquil than he would once awake—

Glorfindel pauses. 

“He’s barely _moved_ , ada—“

“I hardly think he’s moved at all, actually. Is that a good thing? Ada, what if there is something wrong?”

“Perhaps you should check in on him—“

“Well, I was going to do just that. Why else do you think I’m here now? I came to redress his wounds. Glorfindel was kind enough to offer his assistance — but alas, it appears we were beaten to the room.”

The sunny-haired elf takes a step forward, ignoring the conversation of his peers to slowly lower himself to one knee and get a better look at the patient’s face. 

“Hm,” he thoughtfully hums, quietly to himself. 

That smile twitches, the corners edging up ever so slightly. 

“Ada, we are sorry, you know that—“

“I think arguing over him while he sleeps is a bit more unseemly and disruptive than debating over him while he sleeps, no?” Arwen presses out, eyes narrowed at the men of her family. 

Elrond brings up a hand to rub at the space between his brows. “Just,” He begins tightly, and then presses out a sigh, “know that I am disappointed in all of you, for your short-sightedness and lack of respect for the injured. You all know better. I _know_ that I raised you better. The fact that he still sleeps is notwithstanding.”

The three young elves lower their eyes to the floor, looking half reproached and half heartbroken. 

“Yes, Ada.” They chorus, and Glorfindel finally speaks up. 

But not to them. 

“You’ve been awake this entire time, haven’t you,” he comments lowly enough not to startle, but loud enough to be heard by the room at large. 

The four elves pivot around to look at him sharply. 

“Glorfindel, what—“ Elrond begins, but trails off when the blond holds up a hand. 

The smile on the patient’s face widens ever so slightly. That’s all at first, and for a moment Glorfindel believes he may be mistaken, before the eyes open in a smooth and easy motion that no one just rising from sleep could ever manage. 

They’re such a light gray that they gleam metallic in the faint glow of the window reflecting the sunlight into the room from outside. They look like silver coins. Glorfindel’s breath catches in his throat for a moment, when all the lad does is stare peacefully up at him, looking almost pleased to be addressed at last. 

“You were awake long before we even entered the room,” Glorfindel realizes, and then a startled laugh escapes his mouth. “All this time, and you’ve just been _listening_.”

Elrond hurries across the room, skirting around the bed and depositing his armful of supplies on the table beneath the window before turning to gaze down at his patient in surprise, his children keeping their distance but leaning in to comedic lengths in order to perhaps catch a glimpse for themselves. 

The lad says nothing. He gazes up at Glorfindel with a calmness in his eyes, that gentle smile lifting his face and giving an almost happy light to it. Glorfindel shakes his head in wonder. 

“You can’t even understand me, can you,” he murmurs. 

There’s that curl at the corner of the mouth, once more. Glorfindel rises to his feet and steps back acquisingly for his old friend to replace him. Elrond is quick about his examination, placing hands against bandages and tilting the patient’s head back to look at his eyes in the light. The boy just lies there, allowing himself to be so gently manhandled, looking almost amused as he watches, silently, the healer’s ministrations. It’s not much of a shock. He’d been laying so deceptively calmly in that bed, with his eyes closed, appearing completely content to just listen to them all talk on and on in Sindarin. It was just shy of _flattering_ , honestly. 

Sindarin is a beautiful, musical language, yes, but even so it is not often that someone treats it with the quiet savoring one would give to a particularly good song. If Glorfindel were any younger than he is, he might even blush. 

Quite like how Elrond’s children are right now, actually. The blond elf treats the three with a slow, wide smile, and Elrohir — prickly pear that he is — returns it with a miffed bluster.

“What,” the last snaps, and Glorfindel only chortles. 

“You three,” he says, full of mirth so thick it feels like sap coating his ribs, “are adorable.”

“Ugh,” Arwen says, narrowing her eyes at him. She opens her mouth to continue, but is interrupted by a soft chuckle that quickly dissolves into a stuttering gasp. 

They turn, the four of them, to find Elrond carefully helping his patient sit up. There’s a smile still playing at the corner of the young man’s mouth, but it’s become more of a grimace now, and he has a hand so delicately hovering over his left side ribs, like it pains him just to breath. Glorfindel isn’t surprised. 

Elrond moves quickly, flitting around much like a swallow, nimble hands snatching up a pillow to fluff and swiftly stuff in between the boy’s back and the headboard. Propped up thusly, the boy takes in a careful breath, mindful of his expanding lungs, before exhaling it slowly, shakily. He treats Elrond with a weak but warm smile of gratitude. 

Oh, he’s cute. Glorfindel wants to bundle him up, swathe him in blankets, and usher him away from the harshness of their world. 

“Oh, so you _are_ awake,” Elladan says, pleased if embarrassed, but more importantly in _Common_ , and Glorfindel and Elrdon both take a sharp breath in. 

The patient blinks for a moment, like he’s been stunned, before a shadow falls across those bright eyes of his. His gaze switches, almost like a turned page, from present to far away, and he raises trembling hands to silently but pointedly press over his ears. Something about his expression is _hurt_ , broken, like a pristine, glassy surface of a gorgeous garden pond that someone’s tossed a pebble into. 

“ _Elladan_ ,” Elrond snaps at his son, voice pitched carefully low, and the ellon rubs a hand over his eyes with a tired sigh. 

“Father? What —“

“Best not to use Common, little one,” Glorfindel decides to help his friend out, since the children all look so confused. 

Elladan doesn’t seem to understand, but he nonetheless looks horrified that he’d caused their guest trouble. As bleeding a heart as ever, that one. 

“Can he speak Sindarin, then?”

“No, he cannot. However,” Elrond leans down, reaching out with a slow hand toward the trembling son of Man as he speaks softly, “It is best we avoid Common whilst in his range of hearing.”

“The _orcs_ ,” Elrohir whispers, looking like he wants to spit the word out, but restraining himself from a harsh tone. 

Elrond place a hand over one of the boy’s, wrapping his fingers around it and carefully drawing it away from the lad’s ear. He leans down and starts murmuring soft elvish words and slowly but surely the patient begins to relax again. The shadows in his eyes flit about, as if seeking to cause damage, but another blink or two and they’re gone as if they were never there. 

Elladan steps forward, then, inching his way toward the bed. He sits at the end of it and places a feather-light hand over one of the blanket-covered legs, and breathes out a sigh. 

“I spoke to him in Sindarin on the ride here,” he tells them, haltingly, “hoping that it would perhaps at least help distract him from his pain. Do you… do you think…?”

His father reaches over and touches his shoulder. “I cannot day, dear. I think it is best if we stick to Sindarin, for now.”

Elrond shoos his children from the room within the next few minutes. They go reluctantly, Elrohir glaring at the floor and Elladan still with that pinched look of guilt between his brows, led away by a guiding hand from his younger sister. The room is shrouded in such silence that even the trees outside have seemed to stop their rustling with the wind. 

Glorfindel retreats from where he’d sat himself on the edge of the bed, moving to gather the pitcher of hot water. It’s still at heat, luckily — he’d hate to leave and retrieve freshly boiled water, their patient is too interesting and he wants to know more!

Together, through the silence, he and his friend work to maneuver the young man free of the bandages winding around his torso. The boy blinks sedately up at them as they go, allowing them to position him this way and that without putting up even a token resistance. It is almost worrying how easily he allows them to manhandle him. 

The bandages come off and Glorfindel gets to work cleaning the wound, a gaping canyon cut into the boy’s side from chest to hip. It’s absolutely no wonder he wasn’t able to sit up on his own — with the depth of the injury, it’s likely that many of the muscles that lay beneath the skin have been sliced clean through. It makes something sick settle in the pit of Glorfindel’s stomach, and he hates orcs just a little bit more than he had before. Impossibly. He grabs a rag that’s neatly folded on the side table as Elrond busies himself with finishing the preparations of the salve that Glorfindel had helped him mix together earlier. 

He dips a clean cloth into the boiled water, cooled just enough that it doesn’t burn his hands when he dampens the rag thoroughly. He wrings it out lightly, and then holds it up to the top end of the wound, clenching his jaw when the boy gasps lightly under his hands. 

“I know,” he soothes in Sindarin. “I’m sorry, but I have to clean it. Please sit still…”

The boy does, somehow. Again and again, as Glorfindel mops at the dried blood at the edges of the wound, he looks as if he desperately wishes to squirm away from the blonde elf’s hands, but he barely twitches. 

Once the wound is cleaned up a bit more — somehow managing to look even more horrifying and painful in the process — Glorfindel exchanges the damp rag for a clean one, and goes about patting the skin around the wound dry. He’s careful about it, but even so he looks up as the boy titls his head back against the pillow behind him, jaw clenched shut and eyes alight in discomfort and pain. His face appears even paler than before, something Glorfindel hadn’t thought possible. Perhaps something to distract him… 

“My name is Glorfindel,” he introduces himself, keeping his voice to a low, comforting timbre. He places a hand on his chest in an attempt to get his meaning across the language barrier that sits between the two of them. “What might yours be, I wonder?”

The boy only stares up at him with wide, questioning eyes, hands clenching the edges of the sheet so tightly that his knuckles are white. Glorfindel withholds a sigh, smiling patiently at him. He sets down the cloth for a moment and reaches out, as slowly as he can, putting as much intent behind his movements as he can manage. Carefully, he grasps those hands in his and pries them open with a gentle touch, turns them over so that he can hold them in his instead. 

“It is alright, young one,” he tries again, hoping that his tone can convey what his words cannot. “I will not hurt you. I am _Glorfindel_.”

Silver eyes shutter closed, opening a second later in a slow blink. The corner of that mouth curls upward again, and Glorfindel feels the fingers of the lad’s hands curling around his own. He’s warmer to the touch than the elf had expected. 

Luckily, it appears that his meaning did indeed get across, because the boy brings one hand, hesitantly up to hover over his heavily bandaged best. 

“Viper,” he says, voice young and raspy, rough from disuse. Elrond stirs from the tableside, reaching for the pitcher of water on the other table, but Glorfindel maintains eye contact with the boy.

He lifts his free hand and presses a soft touch to the boy’s cheek, almost enthralled as he watches his eyes flutter closed. 

“It’s nice to meet you, Viper,” Glorfindel whispers. “And I’m glad to see you awake.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I debated changing what I named Harry in the last story for this new rewrite, but I realized I can’t. He’s stuck like that in my head, because I’ve been using the same name for this iteration of his character for YEARS now and it’s just the one thing about this story I can’t change. So yeah he’s stuck with the stupid name I gave him when I was 11 years old and thought I was being Edgy. Suffer with me.

**Author's Note:**

> Rewrite of an old, old work of mine.


End file.
